Knitted Star Christmas Quilt x3

When I saw this design I knew I needed it in my life!!!

And then I decided I needed to make it for all three of our children as Christmas quilt. I have made each of them many quilts over the years but never a Christmas one. This was a brilliant idea!
On November 15.
I had no idea how long it would take it I quit cooking and put my head down and got busy.
Literally, I had no idea how long it would take.

But first I had to shop for fabric. My plan was to use all Robert Kauffman’s Kona Cotton but this years there was a shortage of a lot of the colors, most notably Christmas red.

I had the design, I had fabric. I then spent a week washing fabric that refused to stop bleeding. I just kept at it until the all finally stopped. Nine times, that is what it took. Nine long soaks and washes in hot water. All the color families had to washed separately. Then ironed…

Then it was pretty much sewing day and night. I would come up from my studio just to eat.

The first one to come together had no white in it meaning less bleeding. I was still continuing to wash other fabrics when I got this top assembled on November 21.

On December 1st the red and white one was pin based and ready to quilt.

And on December 4th the final one was pin basted. My favorite of all battings are from the Quilter’s Dream line. I especially love their wool for dimension and their request for hand quilting. Though you can’t go wrong with any of them! I chose the select weight for all of these. Flat but with nice crinkly dimension.

I was planning on machine quilting them because of the hand quilting time constraint. but needed a design. After flipping through many books I came up with one from the book Walk 2.0 from Jacquie Gerig, a blogger I have followed since the beginning. I own two of her books and what fantastic resources they are for machine quilting with just a walking foot. I can’t recommend her books highly enough!

I always use the blue markers that erase with water for all my quilt markings. I do make sure they are all spritzed away before I put them into the wash. Heat will permanently set the blue marker so I am very deliberate about getting all the blue off before I put it into the dryer. Because it settles into the batting, you will usually need to spritz it several times before it all comes to the surface. Every time you rewet it blue will usually continue to appear, until it has finally all disappeared. Spritz, air dry and repeat until no blue evidence remains.

On December 10, they were finished! I have done some ambitious quilting over the last 46 years but this may have been the craziest!

Our Michigan weather turned before I was able to get the green, white and red one photographed outside…

I had met my deadline in plenty of time to ship cross country! Next time you question whether you have time to create a project, just go for it!!! Worst thing that might happen would be that it could be a little late and I am sure that it will still be well received!

The kids all loved them! I need to make one for myself, now!